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Cannot change drive letter of partition

Hi All

I have 2 partitions both 30GB on the same HD. 1 was created at the time i installed XP and as usual this was the C: drive. I created a 2nd partition to store data etc etc and this was the E: drive.
Today i deleted my C: drive from the windows setup screen, and installed XP to a new 30GB partition again with the drive letter of C:
Unexpectedly windows at this point listed the E: drive as H:, didnt think it would be a problem as i thought i could change this later in MMC.
However when i try and change this drive letter from H: back to E: i get the following message;
'windows cannot modify the drive letter of your system volume or boot volume'

Now this is the system volume and the NTDLR file exists on ths drive, is there anyway i can move this or change this partition so i can change the drive letter back to E:? I have several programs that all use E:\APPDATA as its path and dont want to have to spend ages changing all this.

Thanks

Adam

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

LeeTutor

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oldpro21

It sounds like when you reinstalled windows it put NTLDR on you data partition (E:) but installed windows on the C: drive. Try renaming NTLDR to ZZZNTLDR to prevent it from being seen. After rebooting you will get a message saying "NTLDR is missing or corupt". That's ok, reboot the pc to you windows cd and follow these instructions:

.Insert the Windows XP CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive, and then restart the computer.

Click to select any options that are required to start the computer from the CD-ROM drive if you are prompted.

2.When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to start the Recovery Console.

3.If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, select the installation that you must access from the Recovery Console.

4.When you are prompted, type the Administrator password. If the administrator password is blank, just press ENTER.

5.Enter in the following commands

COPY X:i386NTLDR C:
COPY X:i386NTDETECT.COM C:
[where X=CD ROM Drive]
Take out the CD ROM and type exit

You may have to also edit your boot.ini file to point to the correct partition:

For example, if your boot.ini looks like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

You may have to change it to "partition(2)" in both places

hope this helps

scrathcyboy

changing the windows XP system drive letter is NOT an easy process for XP. You should follow these, otherwise you will not successfully do it and have to start from scratch --

support.microsoft.com/kb/223188
www.petri.co.il/change_system_drive_letter_in_windows_xp.htm

scrathcyboy

sorry Lee, I didn't see your link -- but the M$ one is the main one to follow. It is a hassle, but it works.

LeeTutor

WSIT, any feedback?

WSIT

ASKER

Hi, havent tried yet.
Been very busy.

Am hoping to try it tomorrow. and will let you know ASAP.

Thanks for the feedback.